So Be It.

The voters have spoken, collectively speaking.  So be it.

Once again the political climate in this country has shifted.  The president's magic wand, apparently, isn't working fast enough.  Fortunately, I honestly don't think anything of significance will change in the next two years after last night's political pardigm shift.  Unfortunately, the current administration now has little to no hope of making any strides in the next two years, either.  It will simply become a reverse case of holding a finger in the dam. 

The real battle for liberals and proponents of change now rests on 2012.  Last night was a setback, to be sure, but change is rarely overnight.  I think even more than the conflicting idealogues, the real concern for the evening should be in the hate and fear on both sides.  The constitution has become an exceptionally well-built bridge with way too many people on it.  Even the strongest foundations are tested.

In any event, this blog is not politically oriented.  At least, I hope it's not, so I'll not linger.  I can say that I'm personally disappointed.  I can also say that I'm not personally surprised.  I've often heard that socialism only works on paper.  Well, there is a case in saying the same thing for unbridled capitalism.  Marx warned of this (Karl, not Groucho).  This nation has an altogether remarkable history of putting the right people in the right place at the right time.  Over the past 234 years it has been almost uncanny in the way that has worked out.  Providential, one might say.  The electorate, although deeply flawed, is like an airplane spinning out of control.  It was discovered in the early twentieth century, much to everyone's dismay, that if left alone, it will right itself, often times after the pilot has ejected with his parachute.  And so has been the case of this nation.  Just when everything seems to be spinning out of control, the country rights itself.  It happened in 1783, it happened in 1814, it happened in 1865, it happened in 1900, it happened in 1917, it happened in 1933, it happened in 1941, it happened in 1960, it happened in 1980, and it happened in 2008.  It will happen again.

See you tomorrow.

Election Day.

The first time I voted was thirty one years ago this week and I voted for Jimmy Carter in the presidential race.  Four years later, for the first and only time, I voted Republican, making my mark next to the name of Ronald Reagan.  I hadn't really formed any political ideology yet, and I was still voting for the 'person' rather than the ideas.  I think that's probably a fairly common thing for young people to do.  I don't regret voting for Reagan, although in retrospect I disagreed with nearly every sentence he ever uttered.  Even today, I believe Ronald Reagan was a good man, just misguided.  As I've gotten older and more informed I can't say that about very many Republicans.  The entire party, the very platform itself, is motivated by unabashed greed and poorly disguised self-interest.  Then again, as a buddy of mine once pointed out to me, that may very well be what our founding fathers had in mind when sculpting our constitution.  The financially elite don't like to give that title up without a fight.  And frankly, I completely understand that.  Henry Kissinger once said something akin to this: if you're under 30 and a republican, you're probably a fool and if you're over 30 and a democrat you're probably a failure.  Harsh, but not surprising. 

I have never hidden the fact that I'm a far left, liberal democrat these days.  And yet, as I get older, I find myself, deep in my unspoken beliefs, sometimes questioning that.  I certainly have a few 'on the fence' thoughts about foreign policy.  And my domestic social political beliefs have begun to waver from time to time.  Only being honest here.

But at the end of the day my better angels kick in and I'm motiviated all over again by a clear sense of right and wrong.  The problem is, of course, my leftist ideas are colored by the inescapable fact that often times they simply don't work.  One only has to live in the city of Chicago for a few years to see this.  Chicago is unquestionably the most corrupt city, politically speaking, in the United States of America.  The city is, for all intents and purposes, under martial law.  The police department there is as close to NAZI Germany as one can imagine.  Three of the last four Illinois Governors are either in jail or going there.  The city itself has been under the thumb of the arrogant and uncompromising Richard Daley for nearly three decades.  I despise that city and its corruption. 

Long ago I came to a decision about my political leanings and the impetus for my voting patterns.  I simply can't vote for the individual anymore.  It just doesn't make sense.  And I can't control what any politician will actually do once he or she enters office.  I can't hope to predict the real motives behind their ambitions to hold public office.  It's simply not possible.  Consequently, all I can do is vote for the ideas outlined in the platform of the party itself. 

I have, over the years, become fascinated with the office of the presidency.  I have read myriad books on the subject and will always search out programs about it on TV.  I have become enamored with the Lincolns (the only certified 'genius' to ever hold that office, in my opinion), the Roosevelts, the Jeffersons (although I completely disagree with Jeffersonian theory) and the Clintons (oh, how I wish Bill could run again) that have held that office.  Just listen to Bill Clinton give an interview today and if you're anything like me you'll wince at the unavoidable comparison with Bush and Obama. 

So today, I exercise my right to vote for the issues and ideas in which I believe.  Here in California it's gotten very ugly.  Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman are in a cage match.  Fiorina and Boxer are are both hurtling slings and arrows.  It should be an interesting day.  I know it's popular these days to call a race 'the lesser of two evils' but in California it really is true.  I have absolutely no faith in Jerry Brown whatsoever and yet Meg Whitman seems to be the physical incarnation of evil itself.  Fiorina is the poster child for greedy republican politics and yet Barbara Boxer is the very example of ineffectiveness.  So what is one to do?  Well, vote for the platform.  That's all I can do.  That's all any of us can do.

There is one thing I really like about California:  my vote counts here.  In Illinois it really didn't.  The city of Chicago has voted overwhelmingly democratic for so long and in such numbers that my extra vote was redundant.  Here it means something.

I'm very tempted today to do a write in vote.  Next to every single name.  Judge, congressman, governor, senator, dog catcher, it doesn't matter.  I want to write the name - Jeb Bartlett.

See you tomorrow.

My First Halloween.

My first Halloween in California is now over.  And it was a weird one.

Angie and I stayed in and handed out candy to the throngs of neighborhood kids.  Now, I know this is more than a little indicative of the kind of life I've led for decades, but this is the first time in my life I've ever done that.  Hand out candy on Halloween, that is.  After it got dark here, Angie busied herself in the kitchen cooking another astonishing dinner.  She said, "I'm going to be in the kitchen cooking dinner, so you hand out candy while I'm in here."  Sounded easy enough.  Just hand out candy.  No big deal. 

Well, I choked.  Well, not exactly choked, but I did it wrong.  The last time I was involved in the 'candy' part of Halloween (as opposed to the nihilism part of Halloween) I was 10 years old and I held a big bag out and someone put a handful of candy in it.  Then I went to the next house and repeated the ritual.  So that's what I did as the 'hander-outer.'  The door was open (it's California) and I heard a lot of munchkin-like voices yell, "Trick or Treat!"  I went to the door, followed curiously by Franny and Zooey, reached into the bowl and handed out huge handfuls of candy to each kid there.  They were not in normal clothing.  Instead they had on what is called 'costumes.'  This is the first thing I noticed.  When I was growing up, my parents drank through Halloween.  The idea of taking an hour or so to dress up the kids was out of the question.  So I always just put some dark make-up under my eyes and went as a 'football player in normal clothes.'    These kids had on actual costumes.  At first I thought the cast from 'CATS' was at my door.  Angie wandered in to the living room as I was handing out the last, heaping handful of candy.   I was waving to them and saying in my best Ward Cleaver voice, "Happy Halloween!  You guys look great!"  I turned around.  She had a disapproving look on her face.  "What?" I said.  "Now what?"  She said.  I didn't know what was wrong.  I thought I'd done great.  "What?" I said again.  She pointed to the bowl.  It was nearly empty.  "You just gave out almost all the candy on the first group of kids."  I looked at the bowl.  She was right.  I was horrified.  I thought that's what I was supposed to do.  "It's six o'clock and we have no candy left."  Oh, dear.  My mind raced furiously.  "You're only supposed to give out one piece of candy to each of them."  I thought the CATS cast members had looked a little overwhelmed.  "One piece?"  I asked, stunned.  "Yes. One piece.  Now we have no candy for the rest of them."  What do we have in the house that I could use, I thought, beginning to panic.  I had staples.  A bunch of little boxes of staples we'd recently bought.  Maybe if I threw them in quickly, sort of covering them up with my hand, they wouldn't know.  What else?  I had a huge box of 'teeth whiteners' in the bathroom.  They came in individually wrapped pieces.  The look a little like the mouth guards I used to wear when I boxed.  I could throw those in there.  I had a whole jar of milk bones in the kitchen for Franny and Zooey.  Again, with a little slight of hand, I might be able to get away with that.  Franny and Zooey, however, seemed to be reading my mind and were already looking at me accusingly.  Damn.  My first gaggle of kids on Halloween and I'd messed it all up.  Finally, Angie, seeing how stricken I looked, put me out of my misery.  She'd planned for just such a contingency and had bought some secret 'back up' bags of candy.  She got them out of their top secret hiding place (she knew I'd eat it if I knew where it was) and poured the 'second string' candy into the bowl.  It was definitely the Jr. Varsity candy, I could see.  The off brand stuff.  Instead of 'Snickers' it was 'Snuckers' and had, presumably, a lower grade of chocolate and less nuts in each one.  I didn't care.  The night had been salvaged by my forward thinking wife.  I resigned on the spot.  SHE would give out the candy for the rest of the night.  I would act as security.  Standing imposingly behind her.  Talking into an imaginary microphone on my lapel.  Looking around hawk-like for snipers.  And that's how we did it for the rest of the night.

So the rest of the night went smoothly.  Angie handing out the candy, complimenting the neighborhood kids on their outfits, me standing ominously behind her, silently daring anyone to get out of line.

Kids intimidate me.  The littler the kid, the more intimidating.  When they hold out their bags I see, in my mind's eye, an armed burglary of sorts.  I give them everything.  Just don't hurt me or my family, I think.  It's just candy, I think.  We can buy more.  Nothing compared to our health.

Honestly, I don't know how actual adults do this stuff (as opposed to me, a guy pretending to be an adult).  Things other people seem to know by instinct: handing out candy on Halloween, wrapping presents on Christmas, having people over for dinner and actually eating dinner, mowing the lawn or taking excess tomatoes from the garden to our next door neighbors, leaving a freshly-baked cup cake for the mailman, buying new lightbulbs for the house instead of just carrying around the one left that works.  It's all advanced geometry to me. 

But I love it.  I love it with all my heart and soul.  I love learning how to do it.  And I have a very patient, smiling, amused teacher.  And most importantly, Angie doesn't seem to mind teaching me.

See you tomorrow.

1985

Angie and I watched, strangely, Back to the Future last night.  I haven't seen the movie in twenty five years or so.  And, of course, it got me thinking on my favorite and most recent obsession, the passage of time and aging gracefully.

The movie takes place, as nearly everyone knows, in 1985.  The Michael J. Fox character then does a little time travel thingee and ends up in 1955. 

1985.  I had just finished a year with an Equity theatre in Iowa, of all places, and had moved to NYC in May of that year.  For the first few months I stayed with a couple of friends in Jersey City and then in the fall moved to a small studio in Washington Heights.  Actually, more accurately, to Inwood.  I think the street was 201st street.  Something like that.  Seemed a long ways up, but on the A train it was only about 15 or 20 minutes to midtown.

That first summer in New York was a blur.  Out nearly every night and up early working.  Oddly, through a temp agency, I had landed a job at Working Mother Magazine as a receptionist and typist (even then I was a very fast typist).  Later, in October, I think it was, I started waiting tables.  My friends Jeff Wood, John Bader and Rober Fiedler and I were having a non-stop party, it seemed.    Ah, youth.  Frankly, I don't know how we did it. 

New York had actually been my second choice.  I had attempted to move to Los Angeles a couple of years earlier but my car died in Oklahoma effectively aborting that trip.  Funny how things work out for the best, sometimes.  Los Angeles would have been, for me at that time anyway, disasterous.  New York, on the other hand, was precisely the place to be.

That first summer I actually ran into Woody Allen and Madonna.  Both very briefly, Madonna jogging in Central Park and trying to hail the same cab as Woody Allen in Chelsea.  Today, neither of those chance meetings would mean much to me, but as a midwestern boy straight from the trailer parks of Missouri, I felt like I was in Oz. 

That first summer I also did my first play in NYC, a short stint, only one weekend, down in the east village.

'Twas a heady time for me.

Interestingly, the thing that kept me from being eaten alive by that city was my sheer naivety.  I didn't know from nothin'.  I wasn't afraid of anything because I didn't know enough to BE afraid.  New York was a very dangerous city in 1985.  Midtown alone was nearly unrecognizable then.  Nothing like it is today.

Nonetheless, every day was an adventure.  I wouldn't give that summer up for the world.  Absolutely nothing of consequence happened that year, really.  Except the personal experiences still resound in me to this day from that time.  It was a fearless. arrogant time. 

Later I started waiting tables at a restaurant on Fifth Avenue.  Money was pouring in from that gig.  Who knew a kid could make so much money just by bringing food to a table?  It was a new thing for me and, in retrospect, nearly derailed me.  I've seen it so often with young actors, in NY and LA.  They get so wrapped up in their 'day jobs' that the actual reason they moved to the big city is suddenly forgotten.  That is to say, to be an actor, or an artist, or a musician or whatever.  It nearly happened to me.  I got so wrapped up in the day to day workings of the restaraunt, I don't think I even auditioned for anything for a full year.  And, being from the midwest, I moved up the chain of command quickly...waiter, head waiter, bartender, head bartender, corporate trainer...my innate work ethic from the midwest was highly desirable in that place.  And it wasn't until 1987 or so that I finally took inventory of all that was happening and said to myself, "Is this why I moved to NY?"

I think the one moment that saved me was stumbling into Michael Moriarty's professional acting class in 1987.  After that first night in Michael's class I suddenly realized how futile and meaningless my existence was in NY up to that time.  Everything suddenly came into focus.

Plus, my other friends, Robert, John and Jeff, were also putting their career on hold to work tirelessly at 'day jobs.'  Robert was also a waiter over on 3rd Avenue at a place, now defunct, called Lily Langtree's and John and Jeff were with NBC news heading up the polling division.  We were all making money hand over fist and none of us were really pursuing our work in the theater.  This is an age old story, I'm afraid.  I see it even today in LA with young actors and artists.  It's a tremendously dangerous pitfall.

But, like all great stories, it came to an end.  I remember going to a 'cattle call,' that is to say, a massive audition for actors.  I think it was called 'Straw Hat.'  I had, incredibly, not been off the island of Manhattan for nearly 18 months.  I was going just a tad bonkers.  So I threw myself into these auditions and ended up getting about 11 or 12 offers to do Summer Stock theatre up and down the East Coast.  I remember pulling out an atlas one night in my apartment up on 178th street and finding all the spots where I'd been offered jobs.  I literally took a ruler and measured the one farthest from New York.  It ended up being a job I'd been offered in Kentucky, of all places.  I called them the next morning and accepted the job.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

1985.  What a wondrous year.  New York spread before me like a 7-course meal.  And I gorged myself.  I went back for seconds and thirds.  I nearly drowned from the hedonism.  Danger, excitement, love, loss, glory, money, drugs, booze, a hundred midnights.  All of it absolutely necessary, every single moment of that high wire summer needed, all of it pointing strangely toward the exact moment in time that is now.  Honestly, I wouldn't change a thing, not a second, not one instant of that time.  I probably wouldn't do it again, but I love pretending I would.  I have to say this, though, I wouldn't mind doing about six or seven hours of it again.

See you tomorrow.

The Staged Reading.

Monday we start rehearsals for Bachelor's Graveyard in earnest.  And I sincerely hope Earnest doesn't mind.  Ba dump bump. 

It will be the very first public viewing of work mounted by theGathering.

Anyway, staged readings are an animal unto themselves.  Far different from directing a play.  I can trace my knowledge back to creating staged readings to the late Leslie Irene Coger who, quite literally, wrote the book on oral interpretation.  Oral Interp, as we called it, is fast becoming a lost art in academia.

Dr, Coger was a giant among the oral interp crowd in the country.  She took a number of us to several 'festivals' during my two years with her (before she retired).  It was enormously exciting.  In essence, taking great literature and turning it into performance.  But the ideas incorporated in oral interp work perfectly for staged readings, chamber theatre and reader's theatre.

Staged readings are sort of the PBS of theatre.  If done properly they can be really a lot of fun.  If done badly they can be tantamount to watching grass grow.  I have seen and been involved on both ends of that spectrum.

One thing I've discovered about staged readings is this:  regardless what the purists might say, there are no hard and fast rules.  I plan on using music and economic lighting.  I think this elevates the reading to something else, something between full production and 'sit and read.'  It changes the dynamic of the evening and pulls the audience in.  The other thing I know is this:  it must be theatrical.  Stage cannot hope to compete with other forms of entertainment unless we rely heavily on the theatrical.  Once the imagination of the audience is engaged, the theatre is a world of vast possibilities.  Even larger than, dare I say, film. 

There is a sense of explosive energy in the theatre when the imagination is tapped.  The ephemeral quality, often maligned, can be our greatest strength if harnassed correctly.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the usually misused art of 'the reading.'

I remember, years ago, one of the most exciting moments I've ever experienced in a theatre was at an 'oral interp festival' in, of all places, Terre Haute, Indiana.   An actress, older lady, did about forty five minutes of Flannery O'Conner, a southern, darkly comic, almost gothic, writer.  It was mesmerising and excruciatingly funny.  My sides hurt from laughing so much during that reading.  The actress, herself a teacher as I recall, played all the characters, expertly dividing them by a simple slight turn of the head and change of vocal tone.  Absolutely riveting. 

One of the difficult things about staged readings (and if done correctly, most exciting) is the employment of economy of movement.  It is paramount to keep the actors tightly focused.  It is taking what could be a performance liability and turning it into a performance asset.  The actors (in this case, four young and, quite probably, inexperienced reader's theatre actors) must be made aware of this and the importance of it stamped indelibly on their psyche.  Every gesture, every vocal choice, every nuance is a piece of lightning in a setting like this.  Complete control over the material must be exercised.

In many ways, it's much more difficult than acting in or directing a full production.  What's more, very few people understand it.  I have seen far, far too many deadly boring staged readings because of this.  Just a shocking degree of ignorance on the part of the director about what can and cannot be done in a staged reading.  On the other hand, once in a blue moon, I see one that's in capable hands and am absolutely transported. 

The upshot of all this is that staged readings can be, in the right hands, some of the most exciting theatre one is ever likely to see.  And I have every intention of making this one precisely that.

See you tomorrow.

The Least of Me.

It seems I have spent a good many years saying things that inadvertently hurt people's feelings.  Back in the day, it happened a lot more often.  Mostly because I really didn't care.  Here's a section from my play, Praying Small:

"Once something is said, once it passes the lips and mouth, once it spills out into the air like toxic waste in front of us...well, that's as permanent as it gets, folks.  You can't go home again and you can't ever take nothin' back."

I guess as we get older it becomes more important to be on constant alert as to how our words are guaged and weighed by others.  Now, strangely, I'm not talking about myself.  Yesterday someone very dear to me was inadvertantly hurt by someone else's words.  It bothered me all day and all night.  Even though I wasn't (this time) the cause of this hurt, my empathy button was pushed and I obssessed over it a great deal.

The things we say, offhandedly or not, carry so much power, it seems.  They are misunderstood or taken to heart or just plain given way too much importance.  I sort of know how this works.  On the recieving end, I mean.  With critics.  I can't really say too much about the nice things that have been written about me over the past three decades onstage...but I can quote, word for word, the bad things written about me.

Approval is a tricky thing.  Regard is a tricky thing.  It's all tied up in self-worth.  And regardless what the Hallmark cards say, it is important what others think of us.  Despite the American platitudes of self-confidence we hear from every money hungry, self-help, self-appointed guru that dodges and slithers his or her way through life on the way to the bank, gossip and malicious backroom talk hurts.

I grew up in a family that didn't give a whit about the awful, stinging, scathing words that were spit out all over my childhood house.  As Sondheim so perfectly wrote, "Children will listen."  Indeed.  And adults.  And they leave scars, sometimes tiny ones, nearly unseen, and sometimes large ones, gaping wounds we carry around in our id from day to day for years on end.

We can forgive sometimes, that's a gift from our better angels.  But we can't forget.  That's just being human.  And when bad things are said about good people, it sticks in my craw.  When I was in high school, the most significant time for develpment, I was a walking dichotomy of this.  On the one hand, I think in many ways I was a bully.  I had been so stripped of self-worth by a drunken family life that often times, quite unaware, I belittled others in a vain search for acceptance.  I don't think this is terribly unusual.  On the other hand, I was keenly, if not painfully, aware of someone's inability to defend themselves.  Through sheer instinct I only picked on the pompous and arrogant.  And I was never afraid of physical consequences.  I had a fistfight almost every weekend, it seems.  In those formative years, odd as it sounds to an adult, there is that element: fear for one's safety.  That fear didn't exist for me so I wasn't the least bit afraid of verbally attacking someone twice my size.  But I drew the line at the timid and the meek.  Not only that I championed their cause.  Attacking someone that didn't deserve it was always my pet peeve. 

Anyway, the gist of this, I suppose, is to be nice.  Be kind to one another.  Be empathetic.  Do unto others, and all that. 

I have a few friends that truly inspire me in this regard.  They never, under any circumstances, say something, even in private, that might hurt someone.  I can't say that about myself, although I wish I could. 

For the most part I really disdain religious services, especially Christian services.  This from a lifetime of witnessing the jaw-dropping hypocracy from so many insincere Christian zealouts.  But long ago I found myself in a Christian service and the pastor did something interesting.  Upon entering the chapel, he gave everyone a white sheet of paper and a pen.  He asked us, during the sermon, to draw a picture of the person we hated the most in our life.  The person who causes us the most pain.  The bully in our life.  The boss.  The landlord.  The cop.  The banker.  The ex-wife or ex-husband.  Then he pinned them all to a board and asked us all, one by one, to come up and throw a dart at the picture, get all our anger out, be done with it, leave it in that chapel, on that dart board, stuck on that person causing us pain.  And when we had all done that and were all feeling in fine fettle, he peeled away all the pictures.  One by one.  And the last picture was of Jesus.  And he had about 300 holes in his face.  The pastor said simply, 'What you do to the least of me, you do to me.'

I think that's from Luke, but I'm not certain.

Anyway, I liked that service and I liked that message. 

Let's be nice to one another out there. 

See you tomorrow.

Plays and Chairs.

I recieved word that Sam French will be going forward with my play, Praying Small.  For my non-theater, gentle readers, Sam French is the publishing house for plays and musicals.  Delightful news.  A little soft money never hurt anyone.

Plans, decisions and support for theGathering Theatre Company are exploding.  Our Advisory Board is in place now (quite impressive, too, if I don't say so myself), our core ensemble is in place, our first public appearance (Sunday, November 7) scheduled and booked.  It's all good.

I had the young Turks over for a reading of my play, Bachelor's Graveyard, this past Tuesday.  Perfectly cast and very talented.  Couldn't ask for a better cast.  And remember, these four were whittled down from about 200 submissions.  Again, it's all good.

Jim and I are meeting with our web advisor today.  Looking forward to that.

And in other, and far more important, news, Angie and I are buying a new chair tomorrow.  Yes, a new chair.  This is the first the public is hearing of it.  The chair has been selected.  The date and time of the purchase confirmed.  The chair is waiting patiently.  All that remains is for us to actually, physically gather up the chair itself.  It's a fine chair.  The kind of chair to write home about.  As chairs go, you might even call it the Michael Jordan of chairs.  It's a chair's chair.  The type of chair other chairs refer to when they talk about the all-time great chairs.  I won't go into details about the chair, I'll let the countenance of the chair speak for itself.  I will say this, however; this chair, if I were on a desert island, would be the chair I would pick.

See you tomorrow. 

Bachelor's Graveyard Cast

The show is cast.  A foursome of fearless, young, fine actors and, of course, the amazing Rob Arbogast.  First read-thru here at the homestead tonight.

We've pushed one of the plays back to December because of scheduling problems (with both actors and the theater).  So on November 7, we go up with a one-night-only, invited audience, reading of Bachelor's Graveyard.  In December we go up with The Promise.

I agonized over casting.  I am speechless at the number of really fine, talented young actors that auditioned for BG.  But after careful and brain-wracking deliberations, we decided on the cast:  Rob Arbogast in the lead role of Chip and four young, wonderful actors, Carmine Dibenedetto, Benjamin Burt, Adam Silver and Otniel Henig.  All four of which have exactly the right look for the play.

So, for the moment anyway, all is right in theatre-land.

The public read will be an exclusive, invitation-only event.  We've decided to start slow and exclusively. 

See you tomorrow.

Callbacks: Where the Rubber Meets the Road.

So the auditions yesterday were quite successful.  Jim, Larry (Larry Cedar, a fine actor and director at the helm of my new play, The Promise) and I saw a whole gaggle of very fine actors.  We were especially delighted to see some of the extraordinary talent from the younger actors that came in...ah, to be 18 again.  Some of those guys were on fire.  I was terribly pleased.

Part of our strategy is to use the readings of the two, new plays as fundraisers in addition to gauging how they work in front of an audience.  Personally, I'm looking forward to them.  Especially Bachelor's Graveyard, which is a piece that, shall we say, has a lot of 'adult' content written into it. 

The theatre itself, located in a stretch of Los Angeles called NoHo (North Hollywood, sort of the 'Chelsea' of LA), is perfect for our plans.  It's small and clean and has great lighting and sound, a nice little lobby, dressing rooms, and an easily accessible location in a safe neighborhood.

I've called back 20 or so young actors to actually read from the script today.  My good bud and whizbang of an actor, Rob Arbogast (for my readers who saw my play, Praying Small, they'll recognize Rob as the edge-of-ruin character of Roman) will be in today to read opposite all of the young actors.  The play is a memory piece, the memories of a mid-forties man looking back on his halcyon and reckless final days as a teenager and the clear juxtaposition in age will be readily apparent as Rob and the other actors are seen side by side on stage. 

After the all-day auditions yesterday, Angie and I had dinner with some old friends from our Missouri days, Brad and Nelia Southwick and our old friend and favorite photographer, Jerry Hinkle.  I believe Jerry works for the A.P. these days and Brad is a busy producer out here in LA...he's done tons of films.  Nelia, always one of my favorite people back in my college days, devotes a lot of her time to saving animals, cats, dogs, whatever, from inhumane shelters around Southern California.  She has one of the most contageous smiles I've ever come across.  Really terrific people, both of them.

So today we continue the auditions this afternoon and this morning is devoted to re-working Act II of The Promise.  One of the problems with staging a new play is the unavoidable fact of having to actually WRITE the new play.  Bachelor's Graveyard is ready to go.  I'm very happy with every single line of it.  But The Promise has some work to be done on it.  The idea, the theme itself, is solid, but the words, ah the words, must be sharpened.  As George Kauffman once said, "A play is never finished, only abandoned."

Yesterday, as I suspected, found Jim and I giggling all the way through the auditions.  Not at the actors, of course, but at the ridiculous history we have together onstage.  Neither of us could resist telling Larry, between auditions, about our days together in "outdoor drama," causing both of us to periodically dissolve into immobile laughter.

Angie kept things moving along smoothly and only occasionally reminded us to 'keep it short.'  I think she's pretty much surrendered to the idea that Jimmy and I can't help but regress when we hang together.  She's a remarkable human being (and not a bad wife, too).

But today the rubber meets the road.  Today we see who actually has some chops.  Sides (snippets from the scripts themselves) will be read aloud and that's an entirely different ballpark than watching a prepared, exquisitly planned monologue.  Today we see who can or can't make 'choices.'  And 'choices,' ultimately, is what it's all about in this silly, little game of acting.

See you tomorrow.

Auditioning: the lesser of all evils.

The job of narrowing down over 300 submissions for theGathering, our new company, has been nerve-wracking.  Generally speaking, after awhile, I just skipped all the TV and film credits on the resumes and looked for the theatre experience.  And of course, looked to see if the actor was physically in the ball park of what we're seeking.  Not surprisingly, the younger actors flooded the Actor's Access notice.  Older, firmly established actors, are reluctant to submit to a non-paying gig.  I know I am.

Having said that, I'm pretty happy with the 80 some actors we narrowed it down to.  And I'm sure we'll have actors simply show up that didn't bother to confirm and we'll also have actors that did confirm and for one reason or another, not attend.  Personally, I always try and confirm and if, at the last second, I can't make it, I'll reply again and say so.  But again, for a non-paying gig, some probably won't even do that.

But that's okay.  We'll make do. 

There will the three of us in the room today; myself, Jim, and Larry Cedar (who's directing my newest play, The Promise).  Angie has stepped up to the plate admirably and volunteered to keep the whole enterprise running smoothly.  Which is good, because as a former casting director for over twenty years, she has more experience at this sort of thing than the rest of us combined.  She is constantly reminding me, "No chit chat, just see them and move on.  You can chit chat at the callbacks."  She knows me well and she knows that I'll probably do everything possible to put the actors at ease including pleasant chit chat.  As a casting director, she is used to whipping the actors out the door like a herd of lathered, wild horses.

Jimmy, computer wizard that he is, has made a remarkable, little booklet that will be in the lobby outlining our mission statement, advisory board and founding producing directors.  There will be three of them in the lobby to be perused while actors are waiting to come in a do their thing.  I saw it last night and it's just terrific.

I'm taking a small table in for us to have in front of us and a thermos full of Armenian coffee to keep me from zoning off after dozens of monologues.  I've always maintained to my students that decisions are usually made about callbacks within the first ten seconds of entering the room anyway.  But courtesy demands we give them at least a minute to do their thing.

In the audition notice there was one tricky fact we had to diplomatically navigate around: in Bachelor's Graveyard, personally my favorite play I've ever written, one character has to strip down to his undies in the final moments of the play.  It is unavoidable to the plot.  So I said that very clearly in the breakdowns for that character.  I don't know if that helped or hindered the amount of submissions. 

Both in NY and Chicago I've found myself on 'the other side of the table' many times.  It is always an education and it has helped me in my own auditions throughout my career.  The main thing I've learned is the people behind the table are unabashedly on the side of the actor.  They  WANT  to be away.  The WANT the actor to be brilliant.  It makes their job a lot easier.  And it has helped me a lot throughout the years knowing that.  It keeps me from thinking of them as 'the enemy.'

I remember once, years ago, auditioning hundreds of actors for a couple of roles in a play called 'The Relative Importance of Jeri,' a really fine play by Jim Uhls, who later went on to write 'Fight Club.'  My close friend and, not incidentally, the best director with whom I ever worked, Jeff Wood,  and I were in the room with a couple of other people.  I was just there as an advisor of sorts because my play, Golden Eggs, was also being mounted in tandem with Uhls' play.  I think that was the first time I was ever on 'the other side of the table.'  In any event, we saw some good people.  Really good actors.  We also saw some undeniable whack jobs.  One guy started bouncing around like a gorilla at one point and threatened to leap on the table in front of us.  In fact, I think Jeff even actually got up and moved back a step or two, much like David Letterman did years ago when that strange actor from 'Back to the Future' started doing karate kicks during the interview. 

Another actress started simulating a very loud and realistic orgasm during her monologue.  While kinda fun to watch, it was still a little disconcerting.  Although it did command the conversation later that night at dinner as we flipped though all the resumes.  That's the thing about sex scenes...whatever the actor or actress is doing in a sex scene, I've always thought, is a pretty good barometer of what they actually do in bed.  I mean, they have to get their inspiration from somewhere, right?  But I digress.

Another guy, I remember, did a really fine monologue for us, very smart, underplayed, intense, quite nice.  And as he left the room said casually over his shoulder, "Fuck all of you."

So auditions can be enlightening.  I still think they are the worst possible way to cast a play, yet there aren't really any alternatives.  They are the lesser of all evils.  Ideally, I'd like to see every single actor in a play, actually in front of an audience, under fire, in the midst of real combat, and make my decision that way.  Of course, that's impossible.  Another thing I've noticed over the years is that very often the reading you get in the room is exactly the same reading you'll get on opening night.  And there's simply no way of predicting that.  So I try to keep a keen eye out for actors that possibly don't audition well but indicate a hidden level of explosive talent.  After all, Robert DeNiro was a notoriously bad auditioner.  The stuff of lore.  He is dyslexic and doesn't read well.  And Brando simply came to audions early in his career and made up monologues on the spot.  In one famous and often re-enacted audition for the lauded and snooty Lunts, he stared at the dark theatre for a long time and then finally said, "Hickory, Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock.  There are people fucking starving in India right now, you pricks."  And walked off stage.  He didn't get the role.

So I'm looking forward to the day.  Undoubtedly we'll get some stories from it.  My concern is, Jimmy and I have a terrible tendency to make each other laugh over the stupidist things.  It's one reason we had so much trouble working together onstage long ago.  We just start giggling over shit that only we find funny.  So, I'll probably try not to look at him too much today during the proceedings.

Tomorrow we'll have the callbacks and the actors selected will be reading scenes from the plays.  We'll give the sides as they leave the room to avoid having to make dozens of phone calls tonight.  Also, Angie and I are having dinner with a group of Missouri friends tonight so I don't have time for that anyway.

One of my favorite audition stories.  Guy comes in, gives his name, pauses importantly, finally starts:  "I'll be playing Gloucester from Richard III...another solemn pause...NOW IS THE SUMMER...stops...pause...I'll come in again.  Leaves the room, shuts the door and walks back in.  Pause.  I'll be playing Gloucester from Richard III...NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT..."

See you tomorrow.